Leonardo DiCaprio Opens Up About His Near-Death Experiences

In The Revenant, the snowy survival epic that will probably earnLeonardo DiCaprio his first Oscar, the actor comes perilously close to on-screen death during a vicious bear attack. And in real life, the movie star and environmental activist reveals that he narrowly escaped expiration on three separate occasions. In fact, the calls were so close that, in a new interview with Wired, DiCaprio says that his friends have labeled him “the person they least want to do extreme adventures with, because I always seem to be very close to being part of a disaster.”

Ahead, the three episodes during which DiCaprio’s maker attempted to reclaim the Titanic star:

Leonardo DiCaprio vs. the Great White

“A great white jumped into my cage when I was diving in South Africa,” the actor tells Wired. “Half its body was in the cage, and it was snapping at me. . . . I sort of fell down to the bottom [of the cage] and tried to lie flat. The great white took about five or six snaps an arm’s length away from my head. The guys there said that has never happened in the 30 years they’d been doing it. . . . It flipped itself back out again. I have it on video. It’s insane.”

Leonardo DiCaprio vs. Delta Airlines

“I was in business class, and an engine blew up in front of my eyes,” the actor says of a past flight to Russia. “It was right after ‘Sully’ Sullenberger landed in the Hudson. I was sitting there looking out at the wing, and the entire wing exploded in a fireball. I was the only one looking out at the moment this giant turbine exploded like a comet. It was crazy. They shut all the engines off for a couple of minutes, so you’re just sitting there gliding with absolutely no sound, and nobody in the plane was saying anything. It was a surreal experience. They started the engines back up, and we did an emergency landing at JFK.”

Leonardo DiCaprio vs. the Faulty Rip Cord

“The other one was the skydiving incident,” the actor explains. “It was a tandem dive. We pulled the first chute. That was knotted up. The gentleman I was with cut it free. We did another free fall for like another 5, 10 seconds. I didn’t even think about the extra chute, so I thought we were just plummeting to our death. He pulled the second, and that was knotted up too. He just kept shaking it and shaking it in midair, as all my friends were, you know, what felt like half a mile above me, and I’m plummeting toward earth. [Laughs.] And he finally unravels it in midair.”

Leonardo DiCaprio vs. Earth (A Bonus Dangerous Encounter)

After DiCaprio thought he had escaped death in the aforementioned adventure-gone-wrong, the actor shares that the scare was not entirely over. “The fun part was when he said, ‘You’re probably going to break your legs on the way down, because we’re going too fast now.’ So after you see your whole life flash in front of your eyes—twice—he says, ‘Oh, your legs are going to get broken too.’” Alas: “We did, like, this barrel roll. We got bruised up, but no broken legs.”

“If a cat has nine lives, I think I’ve used a few,” DiCaprio wisely concludes, adding that, no, he is not accepting any other invitations to sky dive. Now, if only we could get our hands on the video of DiCaprio shark-diving. . .